Cut the Tether
by jenni3penny
Summary: For Flootzavut, inspired by K9Lasko's fantastic LBHE AU piece 'Just Can't Win'. Kibbs, with some Tate. Spoilers for all of 'Life Before His Eyes', S9:E14. "I'm asking you not to marry him." / "And I'm asking you to stop asking me that."


He'd been telling himself for three months now to just keep his own goddamn mouth shut.

Because neither of them really wanted to hear what he had to say on the subject, neither of them wanted to hear what he _actually_ thought of it. But she'd surprised him, shown up unannounced and with two paper grocery bags and looking healthier (happier, prettier, sweeter and warmer) than she'd seemed in months. And that had possibly pissed him off more than he'd expected.

Stratospheric levels of pissed off. Earth shifting and bone shattering levels of pissed.

Because his fist had found a home in drywall two days after he'd seen the extraordinarily pretty ring on her hand, before she'd tucked her palm closed and stuffed both her hands into her jacket.

He hadn't been able to stop staring at the way her arms caught her coat up around her still slim and trim and lithe little body as she'd fidgeted closer to the stairs of his basement.

 _"Shoulda seen that comin'. Congrats. "_

And she'd just closed farther around herself as she'd nodded a dumb acceptance of the congratulations, her head tipping as he'd turned away from her. _"I figured he would have mentioned it to you."_

 _"We don't talk all that much anymore, Kate. He's busy."_

He had no doubt that Tony _was_ busy.

But none of them lied to themselves enough to actually put all that much effort into pretending that was the real reason things between them had gone and gotten hushed.

But that had been months ago. And now she'd gotten the groceries she'd brought (without permission) put away. Now she was sinking her hands into the hot and soapy water she'd run, the smell of it mingling with the oft haunting smell of her and combating the tint from the bourbon bottle that was uncapped open on the table in front of him.

It was far too early to deal with the fact that she shouldn't have still been so (innocently) domestically comfortable in his house if she didn't plan to stay the night ever again.

He ignored the open bottle, not all that sure of when it had been opened nor why he hadn't re-capped it. Except that he wasn't sure where the cap had gotten itself to so, maybe, question asked and answered. His hand caught against the steaming up of coffee she'd placed to his table instead, lifted it to his face. He sank aching into the comforting reality that regardless of the fact they had stopped kissing, touching, nearly completely stopped talking for more than a year... she still knew how to brew coffee to his specifications. "Kate... just... don't do this."

He'd known she would ignore the request even before she did, her hands busied at his sink and she shifted her weight from one foot to another.

She'd always had an impeccable ability to act as though she hadn't heard something and still seem actually, legitimately, sweetly innocent.

"I understand that some men have trouble disregarding the primal urge to be, ya know, primal, but this is disgusting." One dish came up just enough that he could have sworn the moment had happened before. Last time she'd been half naked, though. And barefoot. And he'd been staring at the possessive little love marks he hadn't realized he'd scraped along the backs of her thighs.

"Can you even remember the last time you made rice?"

Maybe if he closed his eyes and opened them again, those marks would be there again.

He kept them closed as he sank lower into the bracing scent of his coffee, humming off a sigh as the sound of dishes dunking and clinking in water echoed around the kitchen. "Don't do it."

"If you plan on having a meal in this house ever again then the dishes - "

"Caitlin?" When he opened his eyes, she was still fully dressed. She was still older and wiser and she was still, unexplainably, Anthony DiNozzo's fiancee. "Don't do this."

"They're just dishes, Gibbs." And some of them slapped together in the sink, the sound just preceding the slap of her wet hand against the counter.

Her voice had pitched somewhere between high strung emotional and still calmly controlled.

Wasn't sure exactly when she'd learned that trick – except that he knew for a fact she'd perfected it while hashing out some of their very last arguments, their end sparring.

"Don't marry him." There was a hushing to his voice and he wasn't entirely sure where it had come from but as far as he was concerned it could take its leave any damn time. He needed to be stern with her, needed to stay sharp. Because she'd always been able to sidle up beside his line of defenses and lean in with that perfect perfumed smell and silently murder his resolve.

"Because it's him specifically? Because it's Tony?" Her body had swayed around as she 'd asked, her curves openly stretched before him as she wiped her damp hands against her thighs, wetting fabric as he watched her familiar fingers and the spark of light that came off a wet diamond.

Nope. Not really. Maybe the fact that it was Tony was the wound-salt getting scrubbed deep but, no... "Because you're settling for what's left, not what's right."

"Wow." She said it derogatorily, eyes narrowed as though she was everything but sincerely impressed. "Hundred plus proof still makes you pretty poetic, huh?"

"Please?"

 _This woman... this woman inexplicably leads to begging. Good luck, DiNozzo._

"You saying 'please'..." Kate's body leaned forward from the counter shoulders first and he once again felt the echo of a moment that had happened before, just the flicker of one. "That was a long time ago. Things change."

"You love him." He shrugged it somewhat genially across the room, as though it was an accepted fact. But, sure, he loved Tony too, in a way. Wasn't gonna marry him. Wasn't gonna force fit two lives together just for some semblance of safety and normalcy.

He didn't much see why they felt the need to do so either.

He certainly hadn't taught them _that_.

"I'm marrying him."

 _Seems you are. Seems you don't seem all that ecstatic about it either, Katie-Lin._

"Are you _in love_ with him?" Gibbs dared at her as he lifted his head into her sudden prowling nearness, letting his glance flick over the way she'd leaned forward against the back of the other chair and wrapped her hands in it so that he was faced with that glorious fucking ring again.

"That is none of your goddamn business."

"It was my business awhile ago." He shrugged up at her.

"A lot of things were your business two years ago." Two years? Had it really been _two_? "Things change."

 _Things_.

He still had some of her things around the house. So... could it have really been that long?

Had apparently had them for two years (because if he were to trust anything, any _thing_ , about Kate – it was the fact that she would know, she would intrinsically know the exact measurement of time between them being together and them being apart).

"I'm asking you... not to."

"I'm asking you to let it go." Her voice strode over his forcefully but much of the energy was put on, forced through her teeth. "Just like you did two years ago."

Gibbs snorted skeptically. "You're punishing me."

She laughed sharply in response, her face suddenly flushed red with more vitriol than humor as she shook her head at him, the sound fading sickly as she picked up the bottle and slapped it down sharply closer in front of him. "You do well enough on your own. You never needed my help, Gibbs."

He may have deserved that. Somewhere between leaving her and losing her and despising her for letting herself stay so faraway lost... for letting him stay just as gone.

He may have significantly earned the twist of untainted honesty.

Blue eyes blinked from the bottle and up to her, voice shushing even lower than before as he fisted both hands tighter around his coffee mug. "I'm saying 'please', Kate."

"You're gonna need to buy dish soap." Her disregard of his request seemed so clean and tactical, just a directive to be followed and not her denial of him trying to show her, somehow, he was still feeling something. "Seriously, add it to the list."

He was obviously coming at this from the wrong angle.

She obviously wasn't understanding (or just plain didn't want to comprehend) what he was trying to say. He'd have to find another way.

"It wasn't that I didn't want you."

"No, it wasn't." Her chin dipped as she nodded and leaned into agreement of his assertion, a culled patience somehow curbing her frustration, making her gentler. Her eyes seemed kind again and he breathed into it. "But I'm not Shannon."

 _No, but you're the closest I've found when my eyes are closed._

 _And I'd started to dream of you more than her._

"I loved her." _And you._

"It's the same fight. Two years later. I can't believe..." A resolution stopped her words, a stern ending that she internally forced upon herself as she inhaled and exhaled and then tipped her head into speaking quieter again. "You need dish soap."

"I never said she was perfect." Gibbs defended as he rubbed his fingertips into the still warm cup.

Her head just barely shook side to side, eyes softer than he expected as she stuttered out a sighed sound and let her shoulders slump. "You never _had_ to say it."

It was his silence, his lack of denial, probably, that had her so staunchly turning her back on him once again. He was sort of a relieved by that, though. In a way. At least he didn't have to keep seeing those eyes.

"I'm asking you not to marry him." It was maybe the gentlest, most honest and pained, request he'd made of her in... ever. Ever that he could remember. Which was, of course, why he begged it to the sleek and postured line of her back instead of her face.

She'd always kept her shoulders thrown farther perfectly back when she was wearing heels.

It had always made him smile down the line of her spine.

Her head turned only marginally and extraordinarily slowly, her jaw bitten tightly tensed as he studied her profile. "And I'm asking you to stop asking me that. Please?"

It wasn't the first time he'd made her cry.

It was, however, the first time that her crying in his kitchen _hadn't_ led to him reaching for her.

He reached for the bottle instead.

 _In for a penny and a fucking pound._

He left her for the basement without another sound.

* * *

"Hey."

He dumped the chisel he'd been achingly fisting his grip around onto the workbench. "You too, huh?"

"Been awhile." DiNozzo's voice was crisp, light and forcefully peaceable as he took the last few steps into the basement.

Gibbs turned a glance over how much and how little the other man seemed to have changed since they'd last seen each other, offering up a lazed shrug. "You're busy."

"I am, actually." Tony tipped back, his tone quieting as he gamely closed the gap between them. "Never realized how much paperwork you actually had to slog through. It's exhausting."

 _You're exhausting. All of you. Just leave it alone._

"Was it necessary to make her cry?" _Yes, because... because this is killing anything that's left._ "Really? I mean, I get this hermit thing you're doing. I do."

Gibbs braced his hands along the edging of the bench, avoiding looking at them for too long. "Tony - "

"Naw, I get it. Drink yourself into oblivion and lash out at the only people who may actually have a chance of helping you feel a damn thing? It's nice. Cozy. Very - "

"I don't need this." He pressed away from the bench and the other man at once, reaching for anything he could for a deflection and coming up with a tape measure and a pencil.

"Very Howard Hughes."

"What do you want?" There was little left of patience in his arsenal. Just a whole bitter banking of anger.

"What do I want? From you?" At the very least, DiNozzo had gotten better at showing his disdain without seeming like a pouty little kid. "Not much anymore."

"I get that." Gibbs nodded into an impatient graze of agreement.

"What's Kate want?" The younger man's hand lifted, his fingertips distracting themselves along the arm of a half finished rocker as he shrugged. "She wants you at the wedding."

"I told her it wasn't necessary. The two of you don't need - "

"No, the two of us don't." _Good for you, Tony. Say it like you mean it._ "She does. She needs you there. She loves you."

He felt the hysterical and disbelieving little chuckle rasp up his throat. "That's questionable."

"The hell it is." The smack of the other man's hand into the wood had Gibbs looking up into how sharply his voice had gone. "And you know it."

"You wanna do this?" He pinned a darkened glance on the younger man's face, let himself search over how tight DiNozzo's jaw had flexed. "You wanna have this conversation, DiNozzo? You wanna discuss what that woman _needs_? Because I know what she needs. And you know that too."

She needed to be on her right side to fall asleep most of the time.

She needed at least four kinds of vegetables in the fridge on any given day.

She needed somebody to tell her she was pretty because otherwise, generally, she just didn't necessarily believe it was entirely true.

She said she needed the almond butter lotion because the air conditioning did a number on her but the reality was that she knew she smelled goddamn delicious with it over her skin.

She needed safety pins in her purse because, he had no fucking clue why, but it had been a thing he'd found sort of adorable.

She didn't absolutely need the cream and sugar, but he'd always made sure it was there.

She needed to be touched when she was sad and she especially liked it if he just wiped her hair off her face.

And she'd always needed to be kissed when he'd gotten as deep inside her as physically possible.

A sickly look of distaste paled over Tony's face but only for a moment, his lips twitching as he shook his glance away and toward the workbench. "There's only one thing I need from you."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Take a fucking shower and pick out a nice suit, Gibbs. You're not gonna make her cry tomorrow." The tone was rife with an order, something authoritative that seemed to have mutinied amid his life choices and switched sides between the two of them. "Tim's gonna pick you up at two."

"I'll get there myself." His voice sounded childish, even to himself.

"You will." And Tony's voice still had a vein of control that he was, impressed by and simultaneously despised. "Or we're done."

"We? As in 'you and I'?"

Tony just gave him a quickly nodded smile that was far from genial. "As in."

"Understood."

"You obviously don't, by the way. Know what she needs? Took her almost a year to get over what you did to her." The younger man's voice seemed more... aged than it had used to. It sounded full throated with surety and a high shouldered confidence that had a lot to do with growing up and, Gibbs had no doubt, knowing a woman like Kate Todd was _right there, any time_. "Cutting her off like that? Dropping her cold? And she still forgives you? She's a better woman than either of us deserve."

"Exactly. You're right." She was more than what either of them really deserved, in his estimation. Which was maybe why he'd so long tried to keep her clear of either of their hands. Maybe, ultimately, why he'd pushed her so hard away. "So why don't you let go?"

"Because I fight for my family."

Critical strike. Prime target. Kill zone.

The little fucker had gone straight for his weak heart and the strength of tone he had used, at once, made Gibbs supremely proud of his balls and actually sway sick with the force of the statement's veracity, its inherent truth.

He hadn't fought for her.

(He couldn't even fight for himself.)

It was hard enough to breathe properly, let alone speak. His voice sounded oddly rasping to his own ears as he finally managed, "Get out."

Tony made a nod and searched his glance over the spacious basement, as though memorizing the scene that was spread around him, as though he'd need to re-imagine it later to feel right (or wrong) in his decision to show up. "I'll see you tomorrow."

* * *

He figured every wedding must have a man on the edge of things, some sort of corporeal ghosting at the superfluously decadent egress. And that was his broader excuse for not making it much past the indecently large doors, hands fisted deep into the pockets of the suit jacket he'd pulled on. He'd been a silent sentinel to their relationship for its entirety, he wasn't about to act as though he was a larger member of the act than deserved. Didn't want to be a part of it to begin with. Hadn't necessarily been all that enthused about its beginning nor this seemingly inevitable end. Caitlin needed stability, she needed strength, she needed comfort in feeling safe and guarded and adored. Regardless of how proudly modern-woman she styled herself at any given time... she needed to be cherished, appreciated.

He'd spent years making damn sure that those were the exact traits DiNozzo nurtured rather than ignored, despite the self defensive playboy act.

… it was his own goddamn fault. All of it.

Watching it play out, though... seeing the reality evolve?

Putting a bullet in his own kneecap woulda been a more enticing way to spend his Sunday afternoon.

Because he'd somehow known, without a question nor a doubt, that she would be beautiful.

(He'd somehow known, likewise, that someday he'd witness her in such a silken white dress. He'd just... somehow partners had changed and chairs had been removed during the dancing and he was the one left standing when the silly music died out.)

But then, really, he'd generally found her beautiful in anything. Pencil skirts to flak jackets to that supple brown leather jacket she liked to wear when they knew they were going to be on a case out of the metro area. She'd always somehow made a damn bulletproof vest look lusciously touchable. She'd always made his hoodies look ridiculously adorable. And his dress shirts seemed scruffed since she'd stopped making the starchness seem soft. She'd once made full flight deck gear look sorta cute, but only because she'd been trying to make some wiseass comment at him and ended up eating her own hair when a swell slapped a strong wind into her face.

However... the dress she was wearing...

It was a nightmare of a sweet dream all at once.

Because he'd known (he'd damn well _known_ ) he'd see her in it someday.

* * *

"She bet me fifty bucks you wouldn't show."

He'd met Rachel by accident, and happily so.

He'd met her while standing in the middle of her little sister's kitchen in nothing but boxers and a t-shirt, his coffee close enough that he could sigh into the smell while the older Todd tipped him a bemused and interested glance. She'd dangled her keys to her sister's apartment up with a laughing shrug before tossing them to the table and pouring a cup for herself.

"Hey Rach." he murmured sideways, half smiling into the way he shrugged slightly away from her murmuring, "Glad I could help out."

He'd met Rachel when some things still made a little bit of sense.

And he'd liked her instantly, just by the fact she'd made Kate blush within minutes.

Frankly, he liked most anyone who could make Kate blush as quickly as he'd once been able to... most anyone.

"Why did you come?" Her knuckles brushed against his upper arm, the stance she was allowing as she relaxed beside him leaving him feeling more comfortable – as though he had something safe. "She knows you don't wanna be here. She would have understood."

"Yeah, she would have. Exactly." His words were quiet enough just for the both of them to hear, mouthed aside as he watched a crowd of half familiar faces mingle and laugh before them. "She wants me here. I'm here."

"He's a good man, Gibbs."

 _Really, Doctor? So much for safe harbor._

 _Coulda given me a life vest before shoving me over._

He couldn't avoid the fact that his jaw clenched reflexively, head tipping to the side as he drew in a long and seething breath. "I know he is."

"He adores her."

 _Stop using the Shrink voice._

A huff of air came off his lips, "He always has."

"And he wants her happy."

 _So do I. And isn't that the goddamn point I'm trying to make?_

"Did you hear the part where I didn't say a word there? Ya know, when the Priest asked if anybody had anything to say? And I didn't?"

She took in his answer with that look that seemed to be all about her genetics, the one that matched her sister's cocked glance of barely held patience. "Yes, and your complete silence was especially... loud."

Gibbs just lifted his head into a purposefully passive look, letting his voice hum flat. "He's a good man, Rach. He adores her and he wants her to be happy."

"He is and he does." He hadn't needed her voice nearing along his shoulder to tell him she'd come up along the back of them. The smell of her had always ever been enough to tell him how warmly close she was. "You came."

It was the pleased surprise in her eyes that made him keep watching her, regardless of the world.

"You don't have to stay, Gibbs." And it was the sympathy in them that made him turn away even as she reached for him.

"You look..." he was loathe to admit, "happy."

"I am." She didn't nod to make a show of it, didn't make a movement besides squeezing her fingers tighter around his wrist as she blinked. "I am, Gibbs."

He'd been so ridiculously wrong.

He didn't want her happy at all. He wanted her aching miserable.

Because then at least he wouldn't now be absolutely, completely, and _finally_ alone.

He nodded once toward her, body racked still even as she kept her hand on him and even as he realized that he was nodding into his own realization rather than her assurance that she was okay. "That's... all I needed to know."

He pulled her hand off his because, obviously, if one is alone, then there should be no touch allowed.

If one is just one, and all by himself, beautiful women who smell like safety and kiss like an armageddon shouldn't be so goddamn close.

"Gibbs?"

"It's okay." He shook it off, lifting his arm from the way she reached toward his retreat, palm lifted to stall her up as he nodded. "It's okay, Kate."

"Would you stay if I asked nicely?"

"I wouldn't stay if you ordered me to, Caitlin." At least he'd had enough grace to let the last time he said her full name have a little (almost bitter) laughter in it. "I have far better ways of torturing myself."

That one had hit home. But then, he always had known exactly which ribs to dig the knife between.

And while he was sickly proud of still drawing emotion into her eyes, he hated himself for the darkening color of whatever emotion it actually was.

"You're a good man." Kate said it softly, her hands (that gorgeous ring) lowering along her sides as she nodded. "I adore you and I want you to be happy."

 _Ain't gonna happen, Katie. Let that dream go._

He forced whatever of a smile he could, saw the way it made her head lift to take in the sight. "Take care of yourself, sweetheart."

"Don't leave like this." She legitimately looked sad. He legitimately hated himself for getting what he'd thought he'd wanted. "You should - "

"Nope. Just... no." He reached against her hand long enough to lean in with a nod. "It's okay."

 _It's okay... cut the tether, sweetheart._

She looked somewhat near devastated. "Okay."

"Okay." There was at least some semblance of relief in knowing he felt the same way.


End file.
